


turn the page

by jdphoenix



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Amnesia, Episode: s03e09 Closure, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-19
Updated: 2017-11-19
Packaged: 2019-02-04 12:07:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12770733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdphoenix/pseuds/jdphoenix
Summary: There’s something off, more than just the gaping hole in his memory. His skin feels wrong around him, like he doesn’t fit in his own body anymore.





	turn the page

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the prompt "what happened to us" and it got kinda out of hand.

She screams when he pulls the bandage off. It’s a dry, stunted sound that reminds him all over again of the gut twisting rasp that was left of her voice back in that tent. But she doesn’t move, doesn’t beg him to stop. She’s a trooper, kept pace with him all the way through that firefight with this mess hiding under her shirt. She even arches her neck up to take a look herself and tell him what needs to be done.

It’s not a lot—thank god—whoever patched her up before he got there did a decent job and it was only their escape that popped a couple of her stitches. The place they’re squatting—a vacation home from the looks of it, sans vacationers—doesn’t have much in the way of supplies but he finds a few butterfly bandages in the back of a drawer along with some salve for those burns.

“Sorry,” he says, while he replaces the bandages. Whoever did this to her—and Grant privately hopes it _wasn’t_ that guy he found standing over her; a single bullet to the head was way too good for the bastard responsible for all this—they drew a cut down from her collarbone over her right breast and it’s impossible to avoid some inappropriate touching.

She helps him by pressing down on the adhesive herself. His cover demands he put some distance between them after that little embarrassment but he’s slow to follow through on it. There’s something off, more than just the gaping hole in his memory. His skin feels wrong around him, like he doesn’t fit in his own body anymore.

And for that matter neither does Simmons. Not for the first time he examines her face. Her torso he can pretend is all because of the torture, but her face is thin and pale in a way that speaks of prolonged abuse. Just how long had those people been holding her?

She catches his right hand, turns it over between hers. He’s already seen what’s got her so interested but he’s taken great pains to ignore it up to now. Her fingers trace the line of what is very obviously a suicide scar, an old one.

“What happened to us?” she asks, her voice a little better than it was before.

Grant sighs and now he moves away, this time so he can think. He hasn’t been doing a whole lot of that. Ever since he woke up on that floor, heard her frantic voice, it’s all been instinct and training. Eliminate the threat. Rescue Simmons. Get out. Get to safety.

He knows they’re in England somewhere, figured that out when he nearly drove right into an oncoming car on the road, but that’s about it.

He has no idea where the team is.

He grabbed a cell from one of the guards he crossed off on their way out of that place—it was a freaking _castle_ with a tent city outside—and let Simmons distract herself with calling for help while they put some distance between them and … whoever those guys were. Unfortunately it only seemed to ramp her nerves up more because no one answered. No one. Not Fitz. Not Skye. Not Coulson or May. Not any of the three emergency numbers he gave her for agents stranded in the field. Hell, he even gave her a number known only to Hydra agents and still nothing.

He’s not gonna lie, he’s starting to freak a little here.

He pulls a button-up and sweater from the dresser drawers. Her jacket’s salvageable but he cut her out of the shirt she had on to get at her injuries. Hopefully these’ll be loose enough not to aggravate her wounds and, he thinks, the pink flowers look like Simmons. They might bring out some color in her cheeks finally.

“What’s the last thing you remember?” he asks, holding the shirt so she can more easily maneuver her arms inside.

She huffs out a breath when he starts buttoning her in himself, but doesn’t stop him. “The train in Italy.”

He regrets following through on the impulse to dress her himself when his fingers twitch, but she doesn’t seem to notice, she’s too busy playing with her hands in her lap.

“I went into the luggage car like you said only there was already someone there and he- well, he had a-” She meets his eyes. “Don’t get mad,” she pleads.

He allows himself a small smile. “He had a grenade?”

Her mouth drops open. It’s so comical—and so gratifying; she’s the smartest person on the whole team, it’s nice to know something she doesn’t—that he chuckles while he shakes out the sweater to lower it over her head.

“It was dendrotoxin, not an explosive. They got me and Coulson with one too. Of course we had the sense to _run_ from it.”

“Oh.” She turns her focus inward again, worrying over the problem at hand instead of his gentle chiding. “Do you suppose they’re the ones who-” she gestures between them, from his arm to her middle- “did this?”

He takes a seat next to her on the bed. “No, it definitely wasn’t them.” He doesn’t tell her that all of those men are dead, killed by Mike Peterson on John’s orders. “I remember the rest of that mission.” And what came after, but he doesn’t tell her that either. There’s no telling what her reaction to Skye getting shot will be. “My memory cuts out a few weeks later. We were hunting an Asgardian, an escapee from one of their prisons. She apparently had the ability to hypnotize men?” He shakes his head again. Most of that conversation was spent in argument between Sif and FitzSimmons over whether or not magic is real and Grant tuned out halfway through. “I was telling her to get on the ground, calling for back-up and …” That’s it. The next thing he can remember is waking up on the floor in that tent.

Simmons nods slowly. He can practically see the gears turning in that genius brain of hers.

“We both experienced memory loss. At least several days? On my part?”

“Weeks,” he corrects. He turns his hand over. “And this had to have taken a few months to heal like this.”

Her mouth thins but she takes it well. “Right. We can infer, based on your last memory, that this Asgardian managed to hypnotize you. Did anything traumatic happen after I lost consciousness on the train?”

He hesitates a second too long.

“I’ll take that as a yes. So we can assume our memories reset to just before mentally taxing events. That’s fairly common, from what I’ve read, sort of the brain’s way of making the best of a bad situation.”

“Sounds great,” Grant mutters. “But it doesn’t explain what happened to cause it.”

“No,” she agrees. “But I don’t think it was just us.” She meets his eyes. “There was far too much chaos in that … place to just be about our escape. And the man you shot, the one who was threatening me? He was disoriented before you came in, demanding to know who I was and where we were.”

“You don’t think we were the only ones affected.” That explains how easy it was to get out of there. If everyone was trying to figure out where the hell they were, not a lot of them were gonna bother getting in his and Simmons’ way.

“No. I’m certain we weren’t.” Her expression twists. “I know our duty is to help people in situations such as this-”

“We weren’t gonna do anyone any good there by sticking around,” Grant cuts in before she can get too far into that line of thought. He takes her hand in her lap and silently curses every single person involved in this for how icy her fingers are. “Those people _tortured_ you, Jemma. The priority was getting out.”

Her throat works a little but there’s no defiance in her eyes when she finally says, “Thank you. For rescuing me.” Her shoulders shake on an exhale and he swiftly wraps an arm around them, pulling her into his side. “I don’t know what occurred tonight but you obviously risked your life to save mine and-”

“Hey.” He squeezes her upper arm, ducking his head closer to hers. “It’s you. I promised I’d never let anything happen to you and I meant it.” With the angle he’s at, it’s easy to see the bandage hidden past her collar. Now it’s his turn to sigh. “I’m just sorry I couldn’t save you from all of it.”

Familiar anger bubbles up in his veins. He’s glad, honestly, that he was late to the party tonight. If he’d arrived sooner, seen Simmons on that floor, bleeding from the middle the way Skye was so recently in his memory, he might not have had the sense to get her out before he started murdering every single person in that place. 

But he didn’t find her sooner and what’s done is done. And, given her theory about widespread amnesia, it shouldn’t be hard to track down everyone involved if he feels the need to later. SHIELD’s sure to want to study all of them and Hydra won’t mind if he needs to thin the herd a little bit.

Or they should. He thinks again of the emergency call numbers going unanswered and the lack of clean-up crews heading that direction while they ran for it. No blatantly nondescript vehicles, no SHIELD eagles proudly displayed, no faint whir of quinjets in the air overhead. It’s almost as if the whole agency just disappeared off the face of the Earth.

Grant’s heart skips a beat and he feels suddenly cold. He moves away from Simmons, afraid she’ll notice the chill in his skin.

“You should rest,” he says. “Get your strength up. We’ll move in the morning.”

She fought him on breaking into this place, but she really must be tired now since all she does is nod her head and lay down. She struggles to kick off her shoes and he tugs at them for her. She scowls, but again doesn’t complain. Good thing too because he’s not sure he can stop himself coddling her right now.

“Ward,” she says when he makes to leave.

“Yeah? You need something?”

She struggles to speak, then half-buries her face in the pillow to ask, “Could you stay?”

He smiles and comes around to lay on the other side of the bed. She probably just meant in the room, but he rolls onto his side next to her, draping his arm over her hips, careful to avoid putting any weight on her injuries. The contact settles his nerves some—and that blush it brings to her cheeks isn’t nothing.

“Everything’ll make more sense come morning,” he promises. “I’m sure of it.”

She nods, but worries her lip. He watches her until she drifts off, thinking all the while about the word ‘uprising’ and how he never thought he’d hear it in his lifetime. He really hopes he still hasn’t.

 


End file.
